Turbines, including gas or steam turbines, include nozzle assemblies that direct a flow of steam or gas into rotating blades that are coupled to a rotating shaft so as to cause the rotating shaft to turn. One configuration for the nozzle assemblies includes a singlet design, including a blade, or airfoil, between inner and outer sidewalls, with the sidewalls coupled to an inner and outer ring, respectively, and with a mechanical axial stop at the interface between the sidewalls and the rings.
Current methods of fabricating these singlet nozzle assemblies require welding the various parts of the nozzle assembly together across the interface of sidewalls and rings. However, certain welding technologies can introduce large amounts of heat, along with significant amounts of weld filler material, that can distort the parts of the singlet nozzle being welded. Therefore, lower heat weld types such as shallow electron beam welds, shallow laser welds are typically used, while higher heat weld types such as gas tungsten arc welds (GTAW) (also known as tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding) and gas metal arc welds (GMAW) (also known as metal inert gas (MIG) welding) are not preferred as they may distort the parts being welded due to the significant weld filler material and/or high heat input.